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Guest: Chris Carberry. Topics: Human spaceflight to Mars, Exploremars.org, Mars political advocacy. Please direct all comments and questions regarding Space Show programs/guest(s) to the Space Show blog, https://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments and questions should be relevant to the specific Space Show program. Written Transcripts of Space Show programs are a violation of our copyright and are not permitted without prior written consent, even if for your own use. We do not permit the commercial use of Space Show programs or any part thereof, nor do we permit editing, YouTube clips, or clips placed on other private channels & websites. Space Show programs can be quoted, but the quote must be cited or referenced using the proper citation format. Contact The Space Show for further information. In addition, please remember that your Amazon purchases can help support The Space Show/OGLF. See http://www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/amazon.htm. For those listening to archives using live365.com and rating the programs, please email me as to why you assign a specific rating to the show. This will help me bring better programming to the audience. Please note that in the second segment there were two very noisy cell phone calls and we apologize for that. I believe the noise was outdoor wind noise at the callers location.

We welcomed back Chris Carberry, Executive Director of Explore Mars, to outline for us their Mars 2015 plans along with proposed political advocacy with the new Congress and upcoming 2016 presidential election. In the first segment of our 96 minute discussion, Chris mentioned some of the highlight planned for Explore Mars for 2015 including their H2M Conference at GWU from May 5-7 plus he updated us on the ExoLance and their time capsule projects. We talked about the political work needed and what Explore Mars was doing regarding this with the incoming congressional members and in preparing for the 2016 presidential race. I asked Chris to tell how human spaceflight to Mars is presented to congressional members for the most impact and what the biggest objections were which he said focused on the budget. He also suggested there was lots of political interest in human spaceflight to Mars. Later we talked about Mars or the Moon, competing for funding and for priority status. Marshall called with questions about needed energy for a human venture to Mars, focusing on either solar power or nuclear power. The nuclear power part set up a more extensive discussion. Chris responded to several emails about lunar water and should it be the Moon or Mars. He was also asked about depots and their possible support of a humans to Mars mission.

In the second segment, Kirk called in for updates on ExoLance and he asked about a sustainable one way mission to Mars, particularly if public money was used for the mission. Chris thought we were far off from a publicly funded one way Martian mission. Later, Chris talked about increased interest and talk about going to Mars and he mentioned several companies have plans for a humans to Mars mission. Orion and SLS came up as well. A 20 year time line was suggested for the Mars mission. Toward the end of the discussion, Chris said their 2015 agenda was to continue focusing on building the Mars coalition, to start briefing presidential candidates in advance of the 2016 election, plus working with the new congress. Toward the end of the show, Chris was asked about going to the moons of Mars instead of Mars. Tim, our last caller, wanted to know about Red Dragon.

Please post your comments/questions on TSS blog above. You can contact Chris through his website or me.

Guest: Dr. Roger Launius. Topics: National Air & Space Museum at the Smithsonian, Mars in our culture, Russian & U.S. Mars missions. You are invited to comment, ask questions, and discuss the Space Show program/guest(s) on the Space Show blog, https://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments, questions, and any discussion must be relevant and applicable to Space Show programming. Transcripts of Space Show programs are not permitted without prior written consent from The Space Show (even if for personal use) & are a violation of the Space Show copyright. The Space Show/OGLF is now engaged in its annual fundraising drive. Please see & act upon our appeal at https://thespaceshow.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/space-show-2011-fundraising-campaign. We welcomed back Dr. Roger Launius to the program. His blog which we talked about during the interview can be seen at http://launiusr.wordpress.com. We started our discussion with the mention of his recent blog post, “The Lure of the Red Planet: Early Flyby Missions to Mars.” Dr. Launius went through a short history of Soviet/Russian attempts to go to Mars as well as those of the U.S. in recent years. His blog article contains a more comprehensive listing of these missions and is a good resource for this information. We talked about private enterprise doing Mars missions and our guest said the business case would have to close for that to happen and that we were not there yet. I asked about cultural drivers concerning our interest in Mars. I also inquired about the symphony by Gustav Holtz, “The Planets” and his “Mars, Bringer of War.” Dr. Launius talked about Mars in our culture going back to H.G. Wells, others in the early 1900’s, science fiction literature, as well as early astronomy. Another of his blog posts we explored was his comparison of Sputnik to 9/11 as there were parallels and similarities. Don’t miss this interesting discussion. In our second segment, we talked about the Smithsonian getting the Discovery Space Shuttle, its eventual display, and the disposition of Enterprise which is currently at the Smithsonian. Dr. Launius explained how they will display Discovery to preserve it as close to a real time flying shuttle as possible for historical purposes. We learned that visitors will not be able to walk through it. He does explain the display plans in full, plus he talks about getting the shuttle from KSC to the museum near Dulles Airport and then getting Enterprise to New York as it is to be displayed at the Intrepid Museum. Roger received listener questions about the display of the Enola Gay B-29 which is at the Smithsonian as well as SpaceShipOne. Listeners also asked for his thoughts on Phobos-Grunt and its loss. Our guest pointed out it was the 5th loss of a Russian mission in a year, pointing to some definite problems in the Russian space industry. Some of the problems he described regarding the Russian space industry sounded similar to what is happening with our own space workforce. Commercial space and the private sector came up for discussion with Roger saying that a big difference is that private enterprise will operate their vehicles, not the government. Dr. Launius was asked about space tourism and if it was possible to evaluate any type of market based on visits and comments to the SpaceShipOne exhibit. We talked about STEM educational issues, protecting the Apollo lunar landing sites as historical sites, Pluto in the Smithsonian & the New Horizons Mission. As our program ended, we talked about Plutonium 238 and RTGs for space missions., And a listener wanted to know about the plausibility of one way manned Mars missions. Please post your comments/questions on The Space Show blog URL above.